Buxton Opera House Tuesday April 3rd

Today’s a bit of a red – letter day, as John and the new bus are finally joining the tour. This will ( hopefully ! ) be the last of the self-drive days for the band, and Team Bootle will be all aboard the Skylark from tonight. Buxton’s always a nice gig to play….lovely theatre, beautiful town, great crew, and an excellent pub just across the road. What more could you ask for ?! As his van has displayed something of an aversion to hills, Arthur, Pug and I travelled up last night as far as Ashbourne in order to lighten the load tomorrow, because if there’s one thing this area has in abundance, it’s hills. Bloody great big ones, in fact, and whilst they’re all very picturesque and gorgeous and that, they’re not much fun when you’re trying to labour up them at twenty miles an hour in a fully laden van. As it turns out, Nick, Tomps and Rodders arrive at the gig ahead of us, even though they’ve come all the way from Hoddesdon via Wellingborough this morning.. The weather’s turned a bit manky as well, with cold, driving rain lashing down. For Pug, recently returned from the sunny climes of Australia, it’s all a bit much, and the poor wee chap looks decidedly miserable, dressed as he is for a day at Bondi rather than a show in the Derbyshire Dales. Note to self : Get the lad some trousers ! This is a mega – speedy load in today, as we’re freezing our little nadgers off and just want to get inside. We also hear tell that there may be snow tonight, and the air’s cold enough for us to believe it without question. To think that just a couple of days ago those little nadgers were being sweated, as opposed to frozen off….doncha just LOVE the English weather ? Inside the building though, all is cosy and warm, and we set to work. The band are driving themselves up today on a one – way car hire, so we’re hoping against hope that nothing else goes wrong with John’s plans. As it turns out, we’re just a few minutes away from soundcheck when some familiar Geordie tones boom across the stage. Bagpusss be praised !! John’s here, which means he MUST have a bus, unless, of course, he’s just cycled over and is playing a sick joke on us. It’s good to see the big fella again, though, and he proudly shows us over his new acquisition. She’s an interesting shade of green, and he tells us she’s going to be called “ Sweet Pea”, but the crew rapidly give her an alternative name. Henceforth she will be known to us as “ The Flying Bogey “ . There’s a moment of panic when we see that the bunks are three high instead of the normal two, but as she’s a half-decker ( this means she looks like a double – decker from the outside, but the floor has been dropped to give more space upstairs ) they’re still the normal size. The less limber members of our little party, specifically Arthur and myself, realise that there’s no chance whatsoever of us being able to shimmy up into the top bunks, and lying virtually on the floor would be fine as long as we never wanted to get up again, which rules out the bottom bunk, so we claim a mid-level one each, which means that we can literally roll in to bed without risking serious injury or embarrassing contortions way beyond our physical capabilities. Got to say that the bus is lovely…upstairs and downstairs lounges and even a kind of standing bar area by the upstairs galley, with four seats and a little work table for me at the front. Best of all, though, is that the bunk area has doors at both ends to isolate it from the rest of the bus, so no matter how noisy the neighbours get we can slumber on undisturbed. At last it feels like we’re on the tour !!! So with our accommodation for the foreseeable future sorted, we start to focus on the show. Although it’s quite a small theatre, there’s a really big, deep stage at the Opera House. Rather than do what would appear to be obvious, which is to turn the amps up to fill the space, the guitars in particular have to stay at a modest level, giving Arthur the chance to control the sound totally. In smaller places like Andover, what tends to happen is that the drums can very easily overpower everything, and so people start to turn up to compete, and the result is that you get everything louder than everything else, and that’s REALLY not good. Tonight the levels are just perfect, though, and with Rodders’ lights combining with the theatre rig, we actually see and hear what a truly excellent theatre show this is, and, of course, where we can go with it.. It’s a BIT weird as the audience are so far away from the band ( there’s a very wide orchestra pit ) but otherwise it’s a great show. Now, contrary to all my expectations, we’ve already had blog contributions from two of the tour party, and we thought it’d be really good to have a band perspective on things, because we all see things differently sometimes. That being the case, let me finish here and hand over to our Steve…..